Married Love

damenta

th by their own sexual emotions and by their own moral attitude toward the sexual impulse.... [Men's] Statements

d is an expression of a high power of vitality. So widespread in our country is the view that it is only depraved women who have such feelings (especially before marriage) that most women would rather die than own that they do at times feel a physical yearning indescribable, but as profound as hunger f

e: "In the normal woman, especially of the higher social classes, the sexual instinct is acquired, not inborn; when it is inborn, or awakens by itself, ther

hree virtuous and perfectly chaste maidens who were unsoiled by any dreams of love. Iris found them, but could not tak

ching so prevalent that the racial instincts are low and shameful; and also the social condition which places so many women in the position of depending on their husb

affected her. It is also true that (partly due to the inhibiting influences of our customs, traditions and social code) women may marry before it wakes, and may remain long after marriage entirely unconscious that it surges subdued within them. For innumerable women, too, the husband's regular habits of intercourse, claiming her both when she would naturally enjoy union and when it is to some degree repugnant to her, have tended to flatten out the billowing curves of the lin

(particularly happy wives whose feelings are not complicated by the stimulus of another love) who have been separated from their husbands for some months through professional or business duties-whose husbands, for instance, are abroad-are the women from whom the best and most definitive evidence of a fundamental rhythm of feeling can be obtained. Such women, yearning daily for the tender comradeship and nearness of their husbands, find, in addition, at particular times, a

complicated by other stimulations which may bring into it diverse series of waves, or irregular wave-crests. We have all, at some time, watched the regular ripples of the sea breaking against a sand-b

hat it is perhaps scarcely surprising that the deep, underlying waves of her primitive sex-tides have been obscured, and entangled so that their r

fidence of many more, I have obtained a number of most interesting facts from which I think it is already possible to deduce a generalisation which is illuminating, and may be of great medical and sociological v

nsider several other featur

Experiments have been made to show its influence on the rate of breathing, the muscular strength, the temperature, the keenness of sight, etc., and these results have even

ram is repeated from book to book, and in Marshall's Physiology it is "taken from Sellheim," in Havelock Ellis "from

ty after another, yet nearly every point on which

level till it begins to rise again before the next menstrual period. This simple curve may or may not be true for woman's temperature, muscular strength, and the other relatively

Even a question which we must all have asked, and over which we have probably pondered in vain-namely, what is menstruation?-cannot yet be answered. To the lay mind it would seem tha

oon-month of twenty-eight days, once during which comes the flow of menstruation. If we draw out a chart with succeeding periods of twenty-eight d

Physiology of Reproduction," p. 138), for instance, says: "The period of most acute sexual feeling is generally just after the close of the menstrual period." Ellis speak

en have any idea of taking any scientific interest in life, and partly to the fact that the more profound, fundamental rhythm of sex desire which I have come to the conclusion exists or is potential in every normal woman, is covered over or mas

truation, the other after; but after menstruation has ceased there is a nearly level interval, bringing the next wave-crest to the two or three days which come about eight or nine days after the close of menstruation-that is, just round the fourteen days, or half the moon month, since the last wave-crest. If this is put in its simplest way, one may say that there are fortnightly periods of desire, arranged so that one period comes always just before ea

ar

men. Various causes make slight irregularities in the position, size and du

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a feeble and transient up-welling. Shortly before and during the time of the crest d Alpine air restored the vit

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umstances may be very marked, and may for years, or all her life, so reduce her v

, can be seen in the second curve opposite, where at a the intermediate wave-crest is very muc

uring his long absence. But human beings vary remarkably in every particular, and just as no two people have the same features, so no two people would have absolutely identical curves were they recorded in sufficient detail. Many a woman is particularly conscious of only one sex-impulse in each moon-month. Of such women, some feel the period which comes before menstruation, and some feel the

one or the other period is the more acute and is the one they observe in themselves-if they have observed anything. But a delicate and more accurate investigation of such cases will often bring to light the existence of the second crest of vitality. Once the fundamental

o me, when I reproached her for being unfaithful to her husband, that she desired coitus at least once a fortnight, and that when her husband was not there she took the first comer." Forel did not see any law in this. We may p

ern writers are inclined to deride the Mosaic Law on the ground that it prohibits intercourse just at the time when they think sex feeling should be strongest. But it does not appear on what grounds they make the latter statement, nor do they give any scientific data in support of it. Thus Galabin in his Manual of Midwifery says: "In the Jewish law women are directed to abstain[4] from coitus during menstruation and for seven days after its cessation. Strict observers of the law are said to go beyond what is commanded in Leviticus, and even if discharge la

luxurious life, there are innumerable excitements which may stimulate sexual feeling, just as there are many factors in our life which tend to inhibit or retard it. A woman may be, like a man, so swayed by a great love that there is not a day in the whole month when her lover's touch, his

marriage relation in every way. The burning magnificence of an overpowering life-long love is not given to many, and a husband who desires lasting and mutual happiness in his marriage will carefull

entirely simple matter, and will